


Good Gloaming

by youreallsofuckingrude



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carmilla didn't show up, Cooking, Developing Relationship, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, Gay Panic, Light Angst, M/M, Season/Series 02, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:27:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24179668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreallsofuckingrude/pseuds/youreallsofuckingrude
Summary: “Ah,” Isaac sighs when they first meet. “You’re the other Forgemaster.”He says “other” the way most people say “pig shit,” but Hector’s tired from traveling and he doesn’t really think much about it until he’s gotten lost for the third time in an hour, in the same wing of the castle—following the directions thatIsaacgave him.
Relationships: Hector (Castlevania)/Isaac (Castlevania)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 149





	Good Gloaming

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are my own. 
> 
> I apologize if I've misinterpreted what qualifies as halal food. Feel free to notify me in the comments so I can fix it!
> 
> The recipe for the Sambocade Hector makes can be found [here](http://www.medievalcuisine.com/site/medievalcuisine/Euriol/recipe-index/sambocade).

Art by [@creepy-pumpkin](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/creepy-pumpkin)

~

“Ah,” Isaac sighs when they first meet. “You’re the _other_ Forgemaster.”

He says “other” the way most people say “pig shit,” but Hector’s tired from traveling and he doesn’t really think much about it until he’s gotten lost for the third time in an hour, in the same wing of the castle—following the directions that _Isaac_ gave him.

~

Isaac is tall and well-muscled with wide shoulders and narrow hips. His eyes, a warm reddish-brown, contrast beautifully with his glossy pitch skin. Those orbs, so cool despite their fiery brilliance, glint with sharp, analytical detachment. There’s an edge of menace—of danger—there, too, that matches his _no, I will not tell you what they mean_ tattoos.

He’s quiet, and unimpressed, and Hector’s only seen his chiselled features soften with a hint of playfulness a handful of times, not that he’s counting. 

The point is, it’s almost impossible for Hector to get a read on the man, let alone work with him.

Isaac spends most of his free time either meditating or pretending that other people don’t exist, which is whole separate _thing_ , apparently, and involves a lot more sneering and knife sharpening because demon blood is corrosive to steel, and _if you keep asking asinine questions, Hector, I’ll bury it in your throat._

Hector should probably be more afraid of Isaac than he actually is.

~

He’s been creeping about the castle for three weeks, surveilling his quarry.

Overkill maybe, but he’s on a mission—for Dracula, no less—and he’s absolutely _not_ going to screw this up.

All he needs to do is extend an olive branch. Nothing pushy, just a suggestion—a hint, really—that he’d be open to spending time with Isaac. Open to, eventually, becoming friends.

Hector thinks he might vomit.

He breathes hard, remembering that he got himself into this.

He’s always been a people-pleaser (compliments of his shitty childhood), coping with his low self-esteem and lack of security in relationships with overachievement.

When Dracula—exhausted after another unsuccessful attempt to broker peace between his Forgemasters—had sighed, _I do wish you two were closer, Hector_ , he’d been helpless to resist the urge to kow-tow, immediately dropping to the vampire's feet and pledging to do better at seeing eye to eye with Isaac.

It had pained Hector beyond the shame of chastisement to see his master so disappointed. His feelings about Vlad Dracula Țepeș have, since their first meeting, grown into a complicated little snarl that he doesn’t much like to acknowledge, but that bears a strong resemblance to parent-child attachment.

And now, because of his crippling co-dependency, he’s here, cowering in the entrance to the library ready to risk life and limb for another distant father-figure.

Hector wrenches away from that ugly thought the minute he has it, digging a fingernail into the brick of the wall. He huffs out a little noise, frustrated with himself.

Isaac isn’t so bad.

Not really.

He’d almost certainly been joking about stabbing him in the neck.

Hector shivers, a full body shake, and wonders, idly, if he shouldn’t just dash back to his rooms for a cloak? The sun sets in two hours, after all. He can’t forge if he catches his death of cold.

“Steady on, you twit,” he mumbles. “No backing out.”

He breathes deep, fingers dropping to drum against his leg.

Today’s the day.

Hector takes a step away from the door and proceeds to trip on the edge of a very dusty ornamental rug. The shrill, convulsive sneeze that explodes from his nostrils forces tears into his blue eyes.

He stops short in the ringing silence thereafter, blinking wildly. Arm on a string, Hector brings a hand up to the wetness collecting above the bow of his lips and notes, with some regret, that there’s no blood. Disheartened that his brain did not, in fact, liquefy, he sighs and surveys the priceless books and artifacts that he's just sprayed with snot.

There's no chance in hell that Isaac didn't hear him.

“Oh, _fuck_ it," he mutters to the unimpressed bust of the Roman poet Catullus.

With the resignation of a man on the gallows, Hector strides forward—still sniffling—and comes to stand beside the armchair where Isaac’s reading. His next sneeze is particularly loud and wet sounding. Isaac, the bastard, doesn’t even look up.

Hector stands there, mouth disgustingly dry, fiddling with his glove.

Isaac seems determined to wait him out.

Hector glances at the book in his hands and, because God is perverse, recognizes the open page as Catullus 85.

 _Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? / nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._ (I love and I hate. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask? I don't know, but I feel it happening to me, and I am in agony.)

Dracula help him.

“So, um,” Hector starts, crossing his arms protectively over his chest. “One of the scouts caught some fish this morning, and I think I’m going to roast them.”

 _Good_ , he thinks, mentally patting himself on the back. Just like he practiced. A little rocky at the start, but the finish was smooth.

 _“Compelling,”_ Isaac drawls, dry as the Sahara, before licking his finger and flicking the page.

Hector winces. “I mean, you—you could join me. In the third-floor kitchen after nightfall. If that’s something you eat?”

Isaac snorts delicately, finally glancing up. “Your invitation is conditional on whether or not I eat fish?”

The way that he stares through Hector makes Hector feel more than a little bit naked. He really should have gotten that cloak.

“Er—” Hector fights not to chew on the skin around his thumbnail nervously. “No?”

Isaac’s lips part, spasm with some sort of tic— _a smile?—_ and compress into a stern line. “You’re unsure?” His body appears relaxed, dismissive even, but Hector can see the slight tensing of his thigh muscles in his leather pants.

_A lion deciding whether or not to pounce?_

Hector’s neck prickles. “I’m—you could watch me, I guess? If you don’t,” he says, bewildered, and then more confidently, “I could make a salad.”

Isaac tilts his head into his hand and there’s that tic again, making him look briefly pleased before he settles on irritation. He sighs, long-suffering, “Lucky for me that I will not have to nourish myself on your company.”

Hector doesn’t know if that’s a yes or not. He didn’t get that far in his rehearsals.

“Is that a yes?”

Isaac flicks another page.

~

Hector decides to make the salad out of an abundance of caution.

He starts a fire in the hearth and sets to chopping vegetables and brining the fish, two decent sized trout, like the old women who'd lived next door to him in Rhodes had taught him.

The sun sinks lower.

He goes to his room, which happens to be right across the hall from the kitchen, and may or may not spend a ridiculous amount of time choosing another tunic and tying his hair up out of his face.

It’s sweaty work, cooking.

Hector finds himself humming when he pulls the fish out of the brine and gets them roasting, foot tapping out a rhythm he must remember from when he was a child—though he couldn’t say where exactly he'd heard it.

Maybe at the Speaker encampment that bordered his village? He wasn’t allowed to play with the children, but sometimes they’d let him close enough to listen to the music.

Hector’s good mood carries him until the last few tendrils of light are fading away on the horizon. Doubt creeps in as he sits and gets a look at the spread that he’s prepared, food carefully portioned out and arranged on plates decorated with primrose flowers. 

“This was a stupid idea,” he mutters, eyes falling shut against the sight. Isaac’s not going to show. And why would he? Hector’s painfully aware that he’s a strange, twitchy little man with a pitiful amount of experience talking to beings who aren’t a) for formerly dead, b) on four paws, or c) all of the above.

A throat clears.

Abruptly, Hector’s wrenched out of his cliff dive into the waters of despair. Hope flies in his chest like a startled bird—

And unceremoniously dies.

Godbrand’s got his head poked into the kitchen. Because of course he does.

The vampire’s nostrils flare as he samples the bouquet of cooked fish, aromatic herbs, and wood-smoked Hector on the air. “Smells good in here!” he bellows, obviously tipsy from a trip to the wine cellar.

Hector scowls.

Godbrand leans against the doorway and burps into his fist, eyes narrowing on Hector’s face. “Why’re you looking like a sorry ass, all done up in your fancy clothes?”

“What do you want, Godbrand?” Hector asks, ignoring the question. He sounds tired and just as miserable about all of this as he feels.

“Oh, I just came looking for an after-breakfast snack,” Godbrand says, faux innocent expression in place. “Now that I’m here though, I can’t help but notice that you’re looking rather—” he licks his lips, inspecting Hector from head to toe— "starved for company.”

Hector flexes his hand around the cup of tea he’d poured in deference to Isaac’s abstinence—an interesting tidbit that he’d picked up during his surveillance—and squirms, vole like, under the weight of Godbrand’s fox gold stare. The brick he’d used to prepare the pot of Dancha at his elbow had come all the way from Northern Japan with General Chō. He’d thought that Isaac, so exacting in his professional and personal life, would appreciate the detail that he put into the meal as a whole. But now, with Godbrand here, he’s realizing that the effort of it all—the ceremony—is utterly inappropriate for a meeting between colleagues.

He really should have just asked Isaac to spar.

Of course, then Isaac says, “It’s rude to linger where you haven’t been invited,” and Hector realizes, with a degree of horror, that he’s probably been lurking behind Godbrand the whole time.

For his part, the Viking looks as genuinely shocked by Isaac’s appearance as Hector feels, though he doesn’t turn and reveal his surprise. Godbrand recovers himself quick, and, still staring at Hector, drawls in his lilting accent, “Hello, Isaac. Your lad looked awfully lonely, all done up and smelling like he is. A lesser vampire might’ve taken advantage of such an invitation. But, alas, if you’re here, I can leave knowing that he’s in good hands.”

Hector feels sweat bead on his forehead. There’s something odd about the phrase "your lad" but he’s honestly a bit too busy hoping to die to worry about it.

Isaac steps through the door frame, moving past Godbrand and angling until Hector’s completely cut off of from the vampire’s sight. He sneers, a vicious twist to his mouth, and says, “How civic minded of you, Godbrand. I’m relieved to know that you haven’t shit out all of your sense.” He sounds both cheery and _very_ dangerous, and alarm bells are definitely going off for Hector now.

Godbrand tenses, leaning forward like he’s thinking about tackling Isaac, but Isaac’s posture—so self-assured and _ready_ that even Hector can tell that this is bringing Isaac joy—gives him pause. “Jesus Christ,” the vampire sulks, taking a step backward out of the kitchen. “Nobody in this bloody castle can take a fucking joke.”

Isaac’s eyes follow the redhead as he departs. “Good riddance,” he says, with the satisfaction of a man who’s eliminated a fly buzzing unpleasantly about the room.

Hector almost laughs at the image of a fly with Godbrand’s face but doesn’t. He stares at the wood grain of the table, reeling from his emotional turmoil and whatever the hell just happened.

The part of his nature that’s inclined toward fixing the stray and neglected still arches with pleasure when Isaac slinks the rest of the way into the kitchen and sits across from him at exactly nightfall.

~

Isaac does, as it turns out, eat fish.

~

Hector’s mouth is open around his fourth meaningless conversation starter when Isaac remarks neutrally, blowing over his cup of Dancha, “You’ve done something different with your hair.”

He’s been silent up until this point, communicating mainly by grunts and his weirdly expressive eyebrows whenever Hector offered him more fish or salad.

“Um.” Hector flushes pink under his tawny skin, flattered that he’d noticed. “It’s easier to tend to the hearth with it up.” He chases a stray piece of carrot around his plate to stop himself from touching the silver tuft of ponytail at the crown of his head.

Isaac licks his lips of residual liquid, eyes revealing nothing. They could be talking about the decomposition rate of bodies found in still water. “I like it.”

“Oh,” Hector says, shocked. “I, er, bald’s good too.”

The words register and he cringes, shoulders rising up around his ears. He doesn’t bang his head on the table, but it’s a near thing.

Awkward. Why is he so helplessly, hopelessly awkward?

“I am not bald,” Isaac says darkly, turning a filthy look on him. He rolls his eyes and sets his cup down, gesturing at Hector’s head and then back at himself. He speaks slowly like he’s explaining something to a small child. “You choose decoration while I choose none.”

Hector’s abruptly reminded of the plump little robin that his cat, Gertrude, had brought him last night.

“Kind of like birds that way, aren’t we?” he blurts. “Sporting different plumage to attract a mate.” His hands are tremulous and clammy, but he finally manages to spear that elusive slice of carrot.

There’s a moment of heavy silence and Hector realizes his mistake.

“You grow your hair in the hopes of attracting a mate?” Isaac asks, one immaculate eyebrow arching incredulously up his forehead.

There’s something vaguely _interested_ about the movement that makes it even harder for Hector to concentrate, his thoughts flying around inside his head.

Isaac’s eyes—they’re strikingly vibrant, almost bronze around the pupil. _Intense._

“Ah, that’s not what I—it’s—we’re about to be the only two free humans in Wallachia,” Hector sputters, discomfited. He shovels the pulverized bit of veg on his fork into his mouth before he can fit his other foot in.

Isaac gives him this weird look, then, a little too long. _“Indeed,”_ he says eventually.

“That’s,” Hector says, thoroughly fed up with the both of them at this point. “That’s just—terribly unhelpful; that one-word thing you do. You always manage to sound as if I’m some slug that you’ve discovered defiling the lettuce in your garden.” He shifts in his chair, hoping to throw Isaac’s attention off, and winds up looking like he needs the toilet.

Isaac, the contemptuous prick, stares at him for another impossibly long moment, leant back in his chair with an ease that he absolutely _cannot_ feel. “Slug,” he repeats, wiping a hand over his mouth. “In my garden?” His voice cracks, muffled against his palm. Then, he lets out a huge peal of laughter, head tipping back, hand dropping to reveal a wide smile. After almost half a minute of snickering, Isaac wipes tears of mirth from his eyes and says, “Oh, Hector. If you only knew.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hector mutters, peevish. He’s not at all mollified by the spectacle of Isaac giggling. He’s not. “Laugh it up. Not all of us Forgemasters can be the scary, mysterious type. Someone’s got to be approachable.” 

“Yes,” Isaac says, sounding thoughtful. He sits up and leans forward, reaches out to brush his thumb over a streak of salad dressing at the corner of Hector’s lips. It’s a graze. Barely there at all. The air shifts, heats. “You certainly are that.”

Hector chokes on his spit. “Erm. So—what are your thoughts on Gresit?” he nearly shouts.

~

The next month is…interesting.

Dinner.

It becomes a thing they do.

After the first few times Hector invites him to the third-floor kitchen, Isaac just starts appearing.

It’s fun. Sort of. To say that the conversation improves would be a stretch, but—

There’s a change.

Hector’s insecure and stroppy by equal turns, but Isaac, who’s never met a well-socialized person that he'd liked, doesn’t seem to mind. It’s nice to have someone to cook for. To create things that bring joy instead of destruction. And anyway, Isaac’s a great critic to try his repertoire out on. Hector treats the both of them to increasingly elaborate meals, baking, in accompaniment, everything from brown bread to Baklava. 

Things get a bit a sticky—metaphorically—when he tries to serve Isaac glazed boar. But, thankfully, there’s barely a perceptible pause before Isaac’s quietly explaining—with an unusual amount of patience for Hector’s inquisitiveness—about Halal and which meats are permissible in the eyes of his god.

It occurs to Hector, one night while they’re working their way through an entire Sambocade, that the silence between them is almost comfortable. And, when he really thinks about it, he can’t recall a single instance in the past few weeks where Isaac threatened his life. When he says as much, Isaac rolls his eyes.

“Why would I, after all this time you’ve spent taming me?”

“Because frightening me is your favourite thing to do? Because it kindles warmth in the cockles of your depraved heart?”

Isaac grins and huffs out one of his patronizing little laughs. “Don’t be obtuse, Hector. If I frighten you, who’s going to make me desserts?”

Isaac, Hector’s learning, has a not-insignificant talent for deflection.

~

Over the next six weeks, Hector adds more realizations to his growing list of things about Isaac.

What he’s surmised is that Isaac is well-read and well-educated, with an understated sense of humour and a tendency to ration food that betrays his meager upbringing. He’s cruel when feeling hounded and possessive of the things that he considers to be his, be it a chipped teacup or a chair with a view of the door. What Hector has yet to determine, is what kind of sorcery Isaac's using on him. There has to be some explanation for the way time goes a bit melty when they’re together—his desire to remain tucked up in the kitchen with the other forgemaster superseding any need for sleep.

It’s not that Hector thinks about Isaac a lot, because he doesn’t.

He thinks about Isaac a healthy amount, most often before dozing off in bed, but sometimes in the morning, or in the middle of meetings when Godbrand’s droning _on and on..._

Ok, so, if he’s being honest, the latter is a bit ill-advised. Especially when Dracula—in rare form—comments in the middle of an all-out council argument that he seems in a buoyant mood, and has he finally admitted that pets are not a substitute for intimacy? _There's no shame in human want, Hector. I myself have indulged—  
_

It’s mortifying. And...he learns more about the late Lisa Țepeș than he ever wanted to. Chō won't look at him for weeks.

~

“Here,” Isaac says sharply, three months into their standing engagement. He shoves a leather bundle filled with little jars of ground spices into Hector’s chest. “Use something other than garlic.”

Hector stares at him, eyes comically wide, clutching the bundle of jars to him like a babe. His birthday was three days ago, but Isaac couldn’t possibly have known that. Not even Dracula knows that.

Hector’s mind churns unhelpfully, fixating on the enormity of this one thing.

The first gift he’s ever received—given unthinkingly, by a man he’s plotting the subjugation of the human race with.

Tremendous.

Isaac slaps two freshly bled and skinned rabbits down onto the counter, and Hector wonders, almost hysterically, if this is what it’s like to have someone give a shit about you.

“Thank you,” he says eventually, and finds that it scrapes out a bit uneven at the end. He swallows around the lump in his throat, blinking for focus.

Isaac glances up and freezes, just slightly, startled by whatever he sees on Hector’s face. “Don’t boil the meat into shoe leather this time,” he says, because he’s a ruinous, horrible person and perceptive enough to know that Hector needs a distraction.

Hector’s lips, which had been trembling with emotion, level, and then twist up with aggravation. “Oh, for the love of god!” he squawks, outraged. “I’m unsure about the doneness of the venison _once_ and suddenly I’m a novice.” He scowls at Isaac, one hand leaving his precious bundle to plant dramatically on his hip.

“It’s good to know your weaknesses and seek help from a master when you’re bested,” Isaac says, placidly enough.

Hector throws an onion at his head. Isaac catches it without fumbling and proceeds to finely chop it for the stew.

“Asshole,” Hector snaps, without any real heat behind it.

“You shock me, Hector,” Isaac says, dry, turning away from his onions. “I thought that we were friends.” He smiles, lit from behind by the glow of the hearth, and for all that his eyebrows are in that infuriating arch—like always—his eyes are…soft.

It’s bizarre, but, for a moment, Hector wants to reach out and tease the corner of that smile just to see what Isaac might do. He blinks again, and the rawness lingering in his expression fades when he smiles back.

~

Isaac eventually makes noise about leaving the kitchen, muttering something about morning meditation. They smother the fire and scrub up, leaving the dishes to drip dry in an ancient-looking wooden rack. Hector squirrels his new spices away in a cupboard, too paranoid about one of the jars breaking to leave them out in the open.

There’s a brief struggle when he and Isaac both try to squeeze through the doorway, and Isaac—like, all six-feet, three inches and _fuck you_ of him—ends up pressed to Hector’s back, warm and solid.

They right each other with perfunctory hands and Hector retreats into his bedroom. They don’t say goodbye, which isn’t unusual.

What is strange, though, is the lick of arousal—a rare but not unwelcome sensation—that itches in Hector’s lower abdomen while he takes his hair down and changes into his night clothes.

By the time he lays down to sleep, he has a full-blown erection riding high up under his belly button.

Hector stares at it for a while in a detached fashion, reviewing his day for anything that might have sparked such...tumescence. He can't recall anything especially arousing. Rather, all he’d done was get embarrassingly in his feelings and bandy words with _Isaac._

Hector’s cock twitches, a small, sticky wet spot blooming on the cotton of his nightshirt.

Christ's pajamas.

_“Mroww.”_

The sound pulls Hector’s attention to the end of his bed. His cat, Gertrude, is perched there, body thin and grey where she still has fur. Her ghostly blue eyes shine with judgement in the dark.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Hector says, pulling the blankets up to his chin. “Erections are a normal bodily function for men in their prime.”

Gertrude blinks, slowly.

Gertrude thinks Hector’s a lying shit.

Her toothy yawn suggests that maybe he should see a man in his prime about his little problem.

Hector makes an expression of disgust and flips over onto his side, giving Gertrude—that _bitch_ —his back. He dozes, spitefully thinking about everything from the popularity of mutton chops among Dracula's generals to the relative intelligence of reanimated cats.

~

Hector is a week past twenty-four—and permanently sporting a semi—when it finally occurs to him that he might, actually, be _really_ into Isaac.

Really into touching Isaac all over.

Licking that smug mouth. Being licked by him—

_Fuck._

~

Right.

So.

Hector doesn’t deal with his realization well. He panics and hermits away in his forge, stealing away at odd hours to another superfluous kitchen for meals.

He doesn’t see Isaac for four days.

It’s not the gay thing.

Really, it’s not.

Hector’s never been that interested women, having only taken a pretty Rhodesian girl up on her offer of sex once. He’d liked the feeling of it, the baseness of a tight, wet squeeze around his cock. The rest of it, though—the soft curves and the feminine sighs and the bouncing breasts—had seemed weird. Wrong, even. Unappealing in the way that Hector dislikes smoked salmon, mead, and crowded rooms.

He avoids Isaac because he’s a coward and he’s never been very good at holding onto things—people—without ruining it with his oddness or his very obvious, suffocating need for love.

He couldn’t bear it if Isaac rejected him. And they have a job to do, after all. They’re in the middle of a war.

No.

It’s best for everybody if Hector nips his little crush in the bud and moves on.

~

What Hector doesn’t count on, is Isaac taking issue with his abrupt and unexplained retreat from their culinary partnership.

~

Awareness that he's not alone ripples over Hector as he searches the fifth-floor servant’s kitchen for a pan, pulling the muscle at the corner of his jaw, making his hair stand on end.

He hadn’t activated the magic lamps when he’d skulked in from the hallway, preferring, instead, to fumble around in the dark. He’s been un-harassed thus far in his self-imposed isolation, but one can never be too careful. He assumes that Isaac’s gone back to ignoring him (which is what he'd hoped to achieve by just disappearing), but—

Hector casts his eyes around, feeling that same lurking, wishing despite himself to catch a glimpse of moonlit topaz.

He's probably just sensing Gertrude. She’s taken to tagging along on some of his midnight raids. Or it could be Godbrand.

His eyes perceive the shape of a menacing figure in the murk of a dusty corner. He stiffens—

And promptly goes limp.

It's nothing. A trick of the light. Or his own brain.

Hector chuffs a laugh and forces himself to relax. The muscle in his jaw keeps ticking, however. He runs a hand over the cold stone of the counter, finds a wooden spoon that he fumbles in his nervousness and, eventually, a pan. He forces himself to think about what to cook—a quick fry-up, maybe?—and looks toward the pantry on his left, a storeroom imbued with cooling magic to keep food from spoiling.

His phantom materializes in his peripheral vision.

Hector looses the start of a scream, his heart pounding loud like the Speaker drums he’d heard as a child. Then he recognizes him.

His face.

His smell.

His body floods with heat not adrenaline as Isaac—really Isaac, not a figment of his imagination this time—closes in on him, his wide shoulders and stern expression forbidding any ideas about trying to tuck tail and run.

“Did you imagine that your abandonment would go unanswered?” Isaac growls out, hands half raising like he’s imagining throttling Hector. His hands close around Hector’s hips instead, fingers flexing as he pushes him back into the cupboards.

The wooden spoon hits the floor, but they pay it no mind.

Hector feels so dwarfed by the intensity of Isaac's anger that he has to flee backwards, climbing up to sit on the counter so that their eyes are level. It doesn't help. Isaac, never having relinquished his hips, takes this as an invitation to move in between his legs.

Hector's mouth floods with saliva. He gasps, then, as much from the shock of Isaac’s touch as from his visceral reaction to it. He wants to arch into Isaac’s hands and beg forgiveness. Wants to clasp his broad shoulders and kiss him for his stubborn refusal to be intimidated or embarrassed or denied whatever he wants.

And what Isaac wants—

 _Isaac’s not even interested in you that way_ , Hector thinks, recoiling from the fantasy of requited love. He's frightened by how much he already knows he doesn’t give a shit.

_Shutter it away. Don’t let him see your yearning. Don’t let him pity you._

His eyes sting.

His stomach sinks.

Oblivious to his inner struggle, Isaac looks around the room with no little amount of disdain, like it’s the kitchen’s fault for keeping Hector from him. “Is this where you’ve been concealing yourself?” he demands, leaning in close, fixing Hector with an accusing look.

“You know, I don’t recall you being appointed my keeper,” Hector snaps, pushed to his breaking point by Isaac’s proximity. “Are you done groping me? I have supper to make.” His brain screams at him about how foolhardy that was: _Good evening, Mr. Lion. Do you like my new meat pants?_

Isaac frowns at him. “You actually think to play with me?” he asks, tone disbelieving. His grip eases minutely as he wedges his hips further between Hector’s legs.

Hector’s nostrils flare. He stiffens all over, cock jumping at the contact with Isaac’s pelvis and the erection—a hopeful, but inconclusive development—that he can feel poking him in return. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he bleats.

Isaac tilts his head, studying him. “Interesting," he says.

“What is?”

“Your left eye twitches when you’re lying.”

Hector swallows. He stares at Isaac curled over him, his simmering intensity focused entirely on him, and recognizes that there’s no easy way out of this.

“Why have you been hiding?” Isaac asks, enunciating each word so clearly, so crisply that the edges slice through Hector’s remaining nerves. 

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Hector says, mostly to himself, preferring _literal death_ to actually having this conversation. When he starts to squawk more meaningless garbage, Isaac squeezes his leg. His thumbnail presses against Hector’s skin through his pants, high on his inner thigh, sending an unexpected jolt through him. It goes straight to his cock. Hector shivers and spits, breathless, “God, okay. Okay. I got scared. Satisfied, you pushy bastard?”

“Four days, Hector,” Isaac says fiercely. “Four days I waited in that kitchen like one of your pets.” The way he rumbles Hector’s name with his accent makes Hector’s spine go a bit liquid.

“Jesus,” Hector whispers, an edge of need in his voice now. He licks his lips. “I’m—Are we really going to talk about this?”

Isaac’s eyebrows lift even as his eyes drop, gaze drawn to Hector’s pink tongue and the saliva shining on his bottom lip. His expression is deliberating.

Hector’s heart skips a beat, body thrumming with frantic, restless energy. Isaac blinks, mouth opening, and then, not bothering to wait for his verdict—

Hector lunges.

He throws himself forward, fusing their mouths together.

Isaac wanted. He was helpless not to give.

His first kiss in six years.

His first kiss _ever_ with a man.

One of Hector’s hands cups Isaac’s jaw as one of Isaac’s pulls him closer at his nape. The contact rocks him. Hector gives a cry against Isaac, his lips parting, and Isaac slips his tongue into his mouth. Hector meets it with his own, with slow, wicked laps that make Isaac groan, his free hand sliding up underneath Hector’s shirt. Hector makes a whiny little huffing sound at the spread of Isaac’s big hand across his stomach, tension evaporating, body going soft against him. 

Hector dreamed about this. Dreamed about a person who could make him feel right. Whole. Out of his head with desire. Isaac’s body fits against him like it was always meant to, the exact shape and size for Hector’s mouth and hands.

“Ah,” Hector moans, urging Isaac on as he dips his head, licking and sucking at Hector’s neck. “God, that’s— _so good._ ”

“So chatty,” Isaac says casually, biting at Hector’s pulse. “Don’t tell me that you actually want to communicate like adults.” He tangles a hand into Hector’s hair and pulls him back, skimming Hector’s shirt up over his head before he can catch his mouth again.

“Smart ass,” Hector mutters, vision momentarily obscured when his shirt gets stuck on his nose. He wrestles his way free and Isaac hums against his lips—his own tunic hastily thrown somewhere—already drawing Hector in for another kiss. 

Hand gripping Hector’s waist, Isaac rubs his thumb up and down on his torso before trailing lower, following the dusting of silver hair under his navel. Hector draws in a quick, surprised breath against his lips when he makes contact with the front of his pants. Isaac slides that blunt paw under the waistband and pulls Hector’s cock out—smooth ebony squeezing around golden brown—and Hector leans back to watch, jittery, slightly overwhelmed, wanting very abruptly to come all over.

_Shit._

Desperate to touch him as well, Hector runs his fingers down Isaac’s broad chest to his hardness. It’s no easy feat fitting a hand inside Isaac’s leather pants, but Hector manages. He grasps Isaac’s erection and nearly moans at the weight of it in his hand, dragging his thumb over the head. Isaac jerks as if he’d seared him, his hand tightening around Hector’s cock, stroking faster.

When Hector thinks about them touching each other like this, pleasuring each other, he can’t stop his hips from rocking up into Isaac’s hand.

Isaac lets him experiment a little—forefinger and thumb moving in a tight O down to his base and back up, nail scratching over his frenulum, dipping into his slit—before knocking his hand away with a grunt. Hector looks up at him, confused, afraid that he’s done something wrong, but Isaac just rips his pants open, spits into his fist and takes them both in hand.

Hector’s eyes roll back as their bare cocks touch and rub.

Silk on silk.

Verging on too much friction.

_Hot._

“God,” Hector gasps, voice gone high. Pre-come beads at his tip, wetting Isaac’s palm and their shafts even more with each drag of his fist. Isaac chuckles but the throb of his erection says that he’s just as affected. His fire-glow eyes flicker over Hector’s face, assessing his reactions, searching for—something. Hector doesn’t know if he finds it. Doesn’t ask. He just kisses Isaac—lips sliding soft and sticky—and tries not to blink or breathe or come prematurely. He wants this to be good, so that Isaac might actually want to do it again.

“Will you spend for me, Hector?” Isaac asks. “Show me how pretty you are when you come?” He jacks them harder, _faster_ , twisting his wrist when he gets to the heads.

“Isaac,” Hector says, wondering, stunned by the pressure of his seed ascending his shaft. Isaac presses their foreheads and noses together and holds them there on a knife-edge, mercilessly working their cocks. He slips a hand over Hector’s cheek, tucking a strand of hair tenderly behind his ear and—

That’s it.

That’s _it_.

Hector throws his head back and comes _hard_ , release painting Isaac’s hand and both of their bellies white. Isaac follows him with a shout.

~

Hector's slow to collect himself, finally gathering enough of his wits to try wiggling his ass. Which is numb, by the way. Stone counters aren't great for post-coital brooding. Or are they embracing? He has no experience with the latter so he couldn't rightly say. It doesn't sound like something he'd allow though. It’s just not sanitary. Or emotionally safe.

Isaac hasn't moved either, is still slumped against him like a deflated sail after a storm, biceps bulging with his weight. His expression is utterly foreign. Haughty eyebrows rest innocently above his closed eyelids like they've never questioned the depth of someone's stupidity.

The whole effect is…peaceful? Tranquil?

And, _fuck_.

Hector desperately wants to see that kind of look on Isaac's face every day.

“Isaac,” he says, forcing his tone to be even despite how raw and wrung out he feels.

Isaac shifts his weight to one arm and brings the other to rest on Hector’s shoulder, hand curving to pet absently along his collarbone.

Hector's heart slows under the rub of Isaac's callused thumb.

“I, um. I think—”

_“Extraordinary.”_

“Shut up.”

Isaac sighs, his eyes cracking open. “You were thinking?”

Hector pauses, sucked in by the pull of those shimmering irises. “Yeah—I, er. We should…court. Properly. Now that we’ve—” He waves an awkward hand in the come soaked space between their bodies. “You know. Established our interest in each other.”

Another, lengthier pause. “I mean, if that’s something you do.”

Isaac snorts, his lips quivering with laughter that Hector wants to kiss out of his mouth. “Is that not what we’ve been doing?”

“Huh?”

“Courting, Hector," Isaac says, with real and comic dismay. "Is that not what we’ve been doing for the last three months, or have you been sharing meals with anyone else?”

“No one but you,” Hector replies, maybe a little too honestly, and then his eyes widen, the realization punching him in the face.

The meals, the coversation, the _dates_. He's been dating Isaac.

Which is—

Fine.

Great, even.

Something wriggles through Hector's belly, small and subtle and pleased. He clamps his bottom lip between his teeth. “That's—wow."

 _"Wow,"_ Isaac mocks, rolling his eyes. "Unbelievable."

"Shhh. I'm having a moment."

"Don't hurt yourself."

~

The next night, Hector joins Isaac in their kitchen at the usual time.

“Hector,” Isaac greets him. His eyes are hungry.

“Isaac,” Hector returns, his voice cracking slightly. He can hear his heartbeat too loud in his ears.

Isaac holds two fish up for his approval and Hector flashes him a smile that’s—not fragile, exactly, but maybe new. Unpracticed.

Isaac raises his brows, his own lips twitching, and it’s remarkable how the motion settles Hector. Steadies him.

He swallows and says, confident that he has Isaac's attention, “Let’s start with the brine.”

FIN


End file.
